An osteopath deals with the enormous complexity of the human body on a daily basis. Without us being aware of it, thousands of processes are constantly running simultaneously—usually without any problems. Complaints often only arise when the body is burdened by external influences, such as stress, illness, or trauma.
This certainly applies to the nervous system, and in particular to the central nervous system and the brain. Despite all scientific progress, the brain continues to fascinate us. It is for good reason that many books are still being written about how it works. A major source of inspiration within this field was the English neurologist Oliver Sacks, who practiced in New York and authored many well-known books. He managed to make complicated neurological processes understandable by using stories from his daily practice. His first book on migraine was published as early as 1970 and was later expanded with a second edition.
Within osteopathy, we also regularly see patients with headaches and migraines. In these cases, it is repeatedly striking that there is no single fixed cause to be identified. Precisely because of the complexity of the nervous system, different structures in the body can be involved in the development of the same complaint.
Headache after a fall
On September 8, I saw a 36-year-old woman who had been suffering from severe headaches for a week. Due to the complaints, she had been unable to work for three days.
My examination pointed towards the upper part of the brainstem. It was suspected that this structure had been strained both at a young age and recently once again.
When I asked her about events around her seventh year of life, she told me that she used to do gymnastics and regularly fell off the balance beam—sometimes literally on her head. At the time, that was considered more or less normal within the sport.
In addition, it appeared that shortly before, on August 21 during a camping holiday, she had tripped over a guy line and fallen hard with her face on the ground. Sometimes an old trauma can remain dormant for years and cause complaints again due to a new fall.
Migraine since childhood
Three days later, I saw a 44-year-old man with migraine attacks. He had suffered from this since his seventh year of life. Normally he had about four attacks per year, but this past summer that had increased to one attack per month.
The complaints were starting to cause him more and more concern, partly because his employer had little understanding of his regular absence from work.
With migraines as well, we regularly see that old tensions or injuries in the body can continue to exert a long-term influence on the nervous system.
Years of headaches in a young girl
Another example is a 15-year-old girl who came for a consultation together with her mother. She had suffered from headaches almost daily since the age of eight.
With these types of complaints, the osteopath always asks themselves two important questions:
- Which structure is causing the complaints?
- What caused this situation to arise?
In her case, the examination indicated tension in the supporting tissue of the brain—the connective tissue surrounding the nerve pathways—just behind the frontal bone.
I suspected that this tension was the result of a head injury at a very young age, around the age of eighteen months. When I asked her mother about this, she told me about an accident during a holiday. Her father had tripped over a low bench in a hotel lobby while holding her in his arms and fell hard onto a marble floor.
He had tried to protect his daughter during the fall, but despite that reflex, her head had also taken a significant blow. At the time, the father was mainly shaken by the accident itself, but it is possible that this early trauma played a role later in the development of her long-term headache complaints.
Viewing the body as a whole
These examples show that headaches and migraines can have very different causes. Sometimes the origin lies in a recent injury, sometimes in an event from many years ago.
Within osteopathy, we therefore do not only look at the location of the pain, but at the functioning of the body as a whole. It is precisely through this broader approach that connections can become visible that previously remained unnoticed.
